


All At Once Am I Several Stories High

by nik_knows_nothing



Series: The Street Where You Live [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 11:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17445977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nik_knows_nothing/pseuds/nik_knows_nothing
Summary: The third time MJ meets Spider-Man, she almost tells him.Really, she almost does.Except--(Except.)Except she doesn't.





	All At Once Am I Several Stories High

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again to everyone who read, kudos-ed (kudo-ed?) and commented on the first two parts of this series! 
> 
> You're all so, so kind and encouraging, and I really can't say thank you enough!

 

 

The third time MJ meets Spider-Man, she almost tells him.

Really, she almost does.

It’s been exactly two weeks since Mr. Harrington promoted her to team captain, and she’s still reeling from that, to be perfectly honest.

She’d thought about saying no, when he’d asked her if she’d be willing to take the role, Friday before the announcement—she’d been _this close_ to saying no, and he’d given her the weekend to think it over, no rush, just get back to him before practice on Monday, okay?

On Saturday morning, her phone had buzzed at 11:00 AM, which is way too early, by MJ’s count, to be texting anybody on the weekend—

But it was from Liz.

It was from Liz, and MJ had stared at the little red dot on her message icon for a long moment, thinking about how early it was in Oregon, and how Liz always followed the 9-to-5 rule, whenever she was sending out her announcements for AcaDec.

It was only just 9 o’clock in Oregon, and she knew Liz must have queued the message up to send exactly as the second hand ticked over to 9, exactly.

When she’d opened the message, it had said, _did mr. harrington ask you yet??? did you say yes????_

On Monday, MJ had found Mr. Harrington before first period. “I’ll do it,” she’d said, and he’d smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “Liz thought you would.”

And now it’s been another two weeks, and, again, being perfectly honest, MJ had really thought there would be more friction, during the transition period.

She’s not Liz.

She knows this.

But no one else seems to mind too terribly much—not even Flash—and so that’s okay, she guesses, and now it’s just a matter of making sure that they’re ready for whatever terror of a team Liz throws at them from the opposite side of the country in a year.

MJ keeps in touch with Liz, too, after that first text, so she knows that the older girl’s poised for an honest-to-goodness coup at her new school, and that they’re going to have to be pretty darn ready, when nationals roll around.

But for now, it’s just halfhearted trash talk between two teams on opposite coasts, and occasional nervous inquiries as to how school’s going, how’s Oregon, what’s it like over there? And she’s never been the best at maintaining long-distance- _anythings_ , but she’s pretty sure that she and Cindy and Betty and everyone else who Liz still chats with have got this covered.

So that’s that, and now MJ’s in one of the little coffee and bookstore combination deals that seem to be popping up everywhere near the school, staring at the flashcards she’s been collecting on the rest of the team and thinking about their meet in a few weeks.

She’s taking her captaining duties very seriously.

Each member of the team has a specialization, and the flashcards are so that she knows where they’re strongest and weakest in each category.

Leeds is their history expert, but he struggles with topics in post-Byzantine Middle Eastern history, so she makes a little note on his flashcard and reminds herself to send him that study guide she found on Thursday. Cindy is their math expert, but she still has issues visualizing statistics questions, so MJ adds a note on her flashcard and reminds herself to find a couple good YouTube links to send along later.

She puts Cindy’s flashcard aside—

And finds herself staring at Peter Parker’s card.

For a second, she just looks at it for a second.

Then she shakes her head, clearing her mind, and thinks, _okay, so what about him?_

Parker is their chemistry expert, but he’s never officially declared a specialization for the team, and he kept fielding the physics questions at practice earlier today—which could have just been because Flash’s hand was hovering dangerously close to his own buzzer—so maybe she should tell him to start focusing on physics, and move Abraham over to chemistry?

MJ taps her pencil against the notecards, considering.

But if Abraham is doing chemistry, then that’s not really fair to him, because he’ll be covering chem and bio, and that’s a lot to have to study for—she could split it down the middle—no, that would just make things too complicated.

MJ sits back and considers the offending notecard.

Then she moves it to the bottom of the pile and focuses on Betty’s card, instead.

_Betty needs to brush up on Romantic-era literature, she missed that Shelley question on Thursday—_

When she looks back up at the clock, she’s startled to realize that it’s nearly five o’clock.

She scoops all her things into her backpack, making enough noise to earn herself a disapproving look from the cat that’s draped over the nearest stack of books, swings her bag over her shoulder, and hits the door almost at a run.

The bell over the door rings wildly as the door slams shut behind her again, and then MJ’s hurrying up the street, eyes on the ground about five feet ahead.

There are already a couple people waiting at the crosswalk when MJ joins them, and so she steps a little ways into the street to steer clear of the crowd.

There are a few impatient-looking business types, and a very busy-looking mother holding the hand of a kid in a red and orange pom-pom hat.

The kid’s clutching what looks like a daycare art project, all scribbled lines and primary colors, and he’s bundled up to his ears, little face all pink with the cold wind blowing down the street.

MJ likes the pom-pom hat, though.

The mom’s phone begins to ring, and MJ watches absently as she drops her kids hand to root through her purse, muttering something about needing to get organized as she does so—

And that’s when it happens.

The kid is pretty young, still, and so when a sudden gust of wind tears his precious drawing away, he panics.

“No!” he shouts, and his mom cries, “ _Jonah!_ ” and makes a wild grab for him—

He slips out from under her hand and darts out into the middle of the road—

MJ moves on instinct, sprinting out after him as the mom screams and a car somewhere lays on its horn, way too close—

She’s not going to be fast enough—

She shoves the kid as hard as she can, turns to see the grille of some stupidly cliché yellow taxi just inches away—

There’s no time to move, and someone’s screaming, and it might be her, and she throws up her hands in a useless attempt to protect her face—

And then—

And _then—_

There’s the roar of air in her ears, and she’s flying sideways, like someone just grabbed her around the waist and yanked _hard_ , and then the taxi blows by in half a second, and she’s somehow not splattered across the pavement.

MJ blinks.

She’s not dead.

She’s on the other side of the street.

So is the little kid, right there next to her, staring up at someone behind her, with eyes the size of dinner plates—

MJ turns around.

“Hey,” Spider-Man says. “You okay?”

“Uh,” MJ says, and tries not to throw up at the sudden realization of how close she just came to dying the dumbest death ever. “Yeah, sure.”

The little kid, shaking just a very little, says, “My drawing—”

_Thwip!_

The picture had fallen into the street in the panic of the moment, but Spider-Man webs it over in half a second, and then there’s kind of a hairy moment where MJ watches him try and figure out how to get the webbing off without tearing the picture.

“Uh,” he says. “Okay, hang on—”

_“Jonah!”_

MJ startles, still skittish, and jumps back as the mother tackles her son in a hug, checking him over for injuries, frantic and desperate.

“Jonah, honey, are you alright? Are you okay?”

Spider-Man gets the drawing loose with a quiet ah-ha of triumph and looks around quick to make sure no one heard it.

“M’fine,” the kid mumbles, like he’s embarrassed to be patted down in front of Spider-Man, even as scared as he still clearly is. “M’okay.”

His mom nearly crushes him in another hug. “Sweetheart, don’t you ever do that again, do you hear me?”

She looks over her son’s head and seems to finally register the actual superhero standing a few feet away.

_“Thank you,”_ she nearly sobs. “Thank you so, so much—”

MJ looks back at Spider-Man to see that he’s looking right back at her, and with a sudden jolt of surprise, she realizes that the woman’s looking at both of them.

“It’s nothing, ma’am,” Spider-Man says, in his best superhero voice, and nudges MJ with his elbow. “Looks like the situation was already under control.”

“What,” MJ says, but then he nudges her again, and she says, “Oh, uh, yeah, I mean—no problem.”

The kid’s looking at her from under his pom-pom hat, so she shrugs.

“Glad the picture’s okay.”

For a second, she’s worried that that sounds too sarcastic, but the little kid looks down at his picture for a second longer, like he’s wrestling with a huge decision.

“For you,” he says, and holds it out to Spider-Man, so that MJ gets her first clear look at it.

It’s a drawing of Spider-Man.

Because of course it is.

_Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,_ MJ thinks, and chews hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling at the stunned look on Spider-Man’s face.

“For me?” Spider-Man sounds like he’s legit about to cry. “Wow, man, you sure?”

He really says _wow_.

MJ watches the kid nod, tucking his chin into the zipper of his coat, and Spider-Man takes the picture with a reverence bordering on veneration.

“Wow,” he says again. “This is amazing.”

He looks at the drawing like it’s a masterpiece at a museum, and MJ feels like the Grinch, and her heart’s growing three sizes right there on the spot.

Spider-Man looks at the drawing a little longer, and then crouches down and hands it back to the little boy.

“Will you sign it for me?”

_God,_ MJ thinks. _No wonder they all love him._

The little boy’s mother produces a pen so that her son can sign his work, and then asks if she can take a picture of the two of them, and MJ stands out of the way to let it happen.

A couple people congratulate him as they pass, and a few people say stuff like _thank God you were there_ , and then the little crowd disperses, and MJ and Spider-Man stand side by side and watch as the little boy and his mother continue on down the street, with the little boy turning around every few steps to wave goodbye.

Spider-Man waves back every time.

When the boy and his mother are finally gone, Spider-Man whooshes out a deep breath and turns back to MJ.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

For the first time, he sounds like Peter Parker, not Spider-Man, and MJ realizes she can’t put her finger on the difference, but there definitely is _a_ difference, and this is Parker now, mask or no mask.

MJ thinks about it.

She glances down, sees her hands are shaking, just a little, and pushes them into her pockets, ignoring the way his eyes track the motion.

“Yeah,” she lies, and wills herself to make it the truth. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for—you know.”

“Sure,” he says, but he’s still scanning her, like he’s not really convinced. “Yeah, sure, of course.”

MJ looks back across the street, where her stuff is still scattered—she hadn’t remembered dropping it, but apparently she had?—and waves her hand awkwardly.

“I’m just. Gonna—”

But Parker vaults across the whole entire street, just like that, scoops up the piles of papers and books that had spilled from her bag, and then leaps effortlessly back across before she’s even taken a step in that direction.

She holds out her arms, and he hands the bag back first, balancing the rest of her assorted stuff while she gets that situated.

“Thanks,” she says again, as he passes her a couple books.

“No problem.”

MJ takes her time getting her books squared away, and then he passes over the rest and she shoves those into her bag, too, making sure everything’s secured properly, in case she has time for any more last-minute-rescue-attempts.

Then she glances back up and feels her heart skip a beat, because Parker’s casually flipping through her very confidential AcaDec notecards.

“Those are—” MJ feels her face starting to burn, and chooses not to think about why. “Those are for a school thing.”

“A school thing,” Parker echoes, and holds up one of the cards, reading out loud. “ _Leeds: send study guide for ME history_.”

No doubt about it, her face is definitely red now. “It’s for a team thing.”

“A team thing.” He flips a few more cards, pauses on Cindy’s and reads each line in detail before looking back at her. “You make these for everyone?”

He sounds—amazed.

MJ wants to roll her eyes, because, really, had it never occurred to him that being team captain meant more than just texting everybody and yelling at them that they’d better show up for practice or she'll eviscerate them?

“Yep,” she says instead.

“Huh.”

Parker glances at the next card, and with a sudden jolt of understanding, MJ realizes he’s looking for _his_ notecard.

His notecard, which is currently completely blank.

A blank notecard requires explanation, an explanation which she’s not really ready to delve into at this moment, and MJ immediately decides, _nope, that’s not happening_.

“I can take those—”

She makes a sudden lunge for the notecards, but Parker easily dodges and keeps reading.

“No, it’s cool,” he says, and he’s trying not to laugh, the _bastard._ “I can help carry stuff.”

She tries again, with no success. “Those are confidential—”

“I’m just looking—”

For a few seconds, MJ considers dropping all her stuff and trying to flat out wrestle the notecards away, but then her mind comes back to her, and she realizes that that would sort of be the opposite of inconspicuous.

“Here,” she says instead, and nearly shoves her bag at him, a study in desperately affected casualness. “If you want to make yourself useful.”

He laughs, but MJ’s relieved to see that he’s abandoned the notecards in favor of making sure he doesn’t drop her stuff all over the street again.

“Nah, I’m good,” he says, but keeps holding her bookbag, all the same.

Then he sticks the notecards into one of the side pockets, zips it up, and glances up the street, in the general direction of the subway station she knows that he knows that she takes.

“Same place as usual?”

MJ reaches for her backpack, and when he hands it back, she slings it across both shoulders, and gives him a suspicious look.

“Should I find this creepy?” she asks. “That you know where I live?”

She’s kidding, of course, but the giant eyes on the suit get even bigger, and he flounders, exactly the way she knew he would.

“Is it?” he blurts, and his voice has jumped up an octave again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—I can—”

“Relax,” MJ says. “It’s fine.”

“Oh,” he says, and visibly relaxes, so at least he’s taking her literally. “Oh, okay.”

MJ glances in the direction of her subway station, too, thinks about the last time she was standing in a too-small train car with the idiot currently standing next to her.

And she’s playing it as deadpan as she does everything else, but it doesn’t change the fact that she could have died—she really, literally could have almost died—

And something in the back of her mind rebels at the idea.

“ _But_ ,” she says, deliberately not looking at him. “It’ll probably take a while to get there. Unless you want to wait for the next train.”

“Uh.” Parker wrinkles his nose, and she figures he’s probably thinking about the crowded subway ride, too. “Maybe not.”

MJ nods, tightens the straps on her backpack, and wonders if that’ll be enough.

Logistically speaking, she’s dressed for the occasion, and her hair’s tied back, so that should be alright—should she tie her shoes? Is that a thing that matters?

Parker’s still watching her.

Waiting for her decision.

MJ makes up her mind.

“Well, then,” she says, and shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “I did promise.”

Parker frowns. “What?”

MJ rolls her eyes.

“I said _next time_ ,” she says, like it’s perfectly obvious, which it really kind of is. “And now it’s next time.”

It still takes a moment for him to get it.

It takes a couple moments, actually, so that MJ starts to feel nervous, like maybe he didn’t actually remember what she’d said, and she’s reading way, way too much into all of this—

But then the eyes on the fancy spider suit are bigger than she’s ever seen them, so that he practically looks like Jonah the orange-hatted pom-pom kid—

“ _Wait_ ,” he says, sounding absolutely delighted. “Wait, _really?_ ”

MJ tells herself not to smile.

She’s only mostly successful.

“Really.”

“Are you sure?” Parker demands, sounding for all the world like a little kid, looking at her like she’s Christmas and Easter and about a billion birthdays all rolled into one.

MJ can’t help it.

She laughs.

“ _Please_ don’t make this weird,” she says, but it doesn’t come out as stern as she wants it to, and Parker laughs, too, bright like sunshine, even as clouds scatter the warmth of the afternoon and the chill from off the street makes steam rise off the road in little wisping clouds.

“No promises,” he says.

MJ lets him stow the Spider-Man fanart in one of her folders, tightens the straps on her backpack just a little bit more, decides to tie her shoe anyways, just to be safe, and then there’s the unbearably awkward moment of trying to figure out how, exactly, this is supposed to work.

“Should I just—”

She makes a half-hearted gesture, like putting her arms over his shoulders, and he seems to realize the awkwardness a second later, which is a real bummer, because they were doing so well, up until this point.

“Uh, yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

In the end, they settle for a piggyback-type situation, so that MJ’s arms are pretty much wrapped around his neck, and she’s really hoping that’s not going to be an issue, because she thinks, if she tenses up at all, there’s a very good chance she could end up strangling him at a couple thousand feet in the air.

It’s just a piggyback ride, she tells herself.

Girls do this all the time.

Not MJ, of course, but that’s mostly because once she outgrew all her friends somewhere in lower school, it became an awkward thing to try and figure out, like, just because she was taller, she should be able to carry her friends, no problem—

MJ tucks her chin into Parker’s shoulder, ignores the fact that her face is burning, and wonders if it would be less awkward to put her chin on top of his head instead before rejecting the idea out of hand.

“You’re too short,” she tells him.

He huffs out a laugh, so that she can feel his shoulders shake, right beneath her arms—

“Don’t be mean,” he says, and then they’re gone.

Just like that—like, one second they’re standing on the sidewalk while people hurry by and clearly do their level best to ignore whatever the hell it is that these two _youths_ think they’re doing—

And the next second, they’re flying, and the wind is whipping back across her face, tugging her hair loose and sending it streaming, so that she wants to shut her eyes against the sting of it, but she _can’t_ —

In an instant, the street is far below them, and they’re nothing, they’re weightless, stretching up towards the sky like, if she wanted to, she could reach out and scrape her hands against the bottoms of the clouds.

Then they’re falling, and her heart comes to lodge somewhere around her throat—she tightens her grip without meaning to, and Parker doesn’t seem to notice at all—falling faster and faster, picking up speed—

_Thwip!_

And they’re flying again.

Over and over, the cycle repeats, and MJ stares hungrily out at the city as it blurs past, catches glimpses of people waving, of people in the high-rise office buildings who are startled out of their late-afternoon daydreams by the impossible sight of two children flying past.

She drinks in everything with watering eyes, barely takes the time to blink for fear of missing everything, and her fingers are already itching to grab her sketchbook, dash down a series of images she knows she could never show _anyone_ —

Up here, you can see everything.

Up here, you can go anywhere.

It’s everything, and it’s anything, and she laughs out loud, without even knowing why—

And then all of the sudden, they’re slowing, dropping towards an apartment block that she only recognizes as her own once they’re careening back down to earth.

They hit the pavement at a run, and Parker almost trips, but catches himself on his own web, stumbles a few steps, and manages to smooth it out into a movement that almost looks intentional.

MJ realizes she’s still clinging to his shoulders and forces herself to let go, let her feet down from where they're currently tucked up around his ribs, and step away.

“God,” she says, because she can’t think of anything else. “How do you ever come back down?”

Parker looks at her, and then he doesn’t look away, and MJ suddenly realizes that she probably looks like a total mess, with her hair all over the place, and she scrapes the worst of it out of her face, determined not to turn red again.

“Yeah,” Parker says at last, and she has to race to remember what she was talking about in the first place. “It’s…it’s not bad.”

_Not too bad._

Understatement of the freaking century.

“It’s amazing,” she says, like he doesn’t know, like he doesn’t do this every day.

_He gets to do this every day—_

“It’s not bad,” Parker says again, but MJ can hear the smile he’s hiding behind his mask.

“How did you know?” she can’t help asking. “That you could do— _that?_ ”

She still can’t think of a word for it.

“I didn’t,” he says, and shrugs when she stares at him, incredulous. “I just really, really hoped.”

MJ tries to picture that, Parker standing on the edge of a building, with his old sweatshirt-and-goggles costume, trying to work up the nerve to just step off—

Her hands are shaking again, and she feels just kind of wobbly all over, like a runner at the end of a marathon, or like an answer at an AcaDec meet that you weren’t sure was right, but you _hoped_ —

“How much energy does that burn?”

It’s not really what she meant to say, but anything else would have been impossible, and the realization that she genuinely wants to know pushes all those other thoughts out of her mind for the time being.

Parker laughs, and she can’t help wondering if he thought she was going to say something else, too.

“A lot,” he says. “So much.”

It’s not an answer, so she pushes further, genuinely curious now. “How many calories do you eat per day?”

“All of them.”

MJ frowns, thinking it over, and it’s easier to focus on a problem like this than it is to remember the way the sun glinted off the buildings from so high above.

“You should probably be eating more,” she says, because he really probably should. “Like, Captain America levels. You probably have a higher metabolism.”

Parker nods, very serious, but he doesn’t say anything, and MJ squints at him, suspicious, before realizing the reason and rolling her eyes.

“You know all this already,” she guesses, and he laughs again.

“Maybe just a little,” he says, and then, like he thinks she’ll be offended. “But it’s still very sweet that you think I don’t.”

MJ rolls her eyes again, because _sweet_ isn’t really the angle she tends to go for, as a rule.

“I’m just saying, I’m sure Stark can pay for some sort of dietician.”

“I don’t need a dietician.”

She doubts that. “Most of the other Avengers do.”

She’s read the different expense reports.

“I’m very careful with what I put in my body,” Parker protests, which is one heck of a statement, coming from someone who she personally watched eat a bagel off the chem lab floor last week.

“Yeah,” she says, voice dripping with doubt. “I’m sure.”

She loosens the straps on her backpack, and then remembers, and digs around through her books for the folder with Jonah’s picture in it.

“Here,” she says. “Before I forget—”

She fishes out the drawing, and Parker takes it carefully, turning a little so that he can look at the drawing without letting it be bent by the wind, which MJ appreciates.

“What are you going to do with that?” she asks, and he shrugs.

“Take it home,” he says, and holds it up, like he’s trying to imagine how it would look, hanging on the wall or, God help her, on the refrigerator. “Maybe I’ll frame it.”

MJ smiles at the idea, like if she were to show up at the Parkers’ apartment, there’d be a whole room just covered in the childish artwork and thank-you letters from the entire city.

“Put it with all the other fanmail?” she guesses.

“Again, it’s sweet that you think I actually get all that much,” Parker says, wry, and she doesn’t push him.

They stand side by side for a second longer, and Parker tips his head, considering the drawing from every angle.

“It’s not bad,” he says at last, but he says it in the same way that he said that the whole web-slinging-flying thing wasn’t bad, either.

MJ hums a little in agreement. “He got the face right.”

Parker _hmmph_ -s, and she realizes that she probably sounded sarcastic, but she means it.

The kid clearly put a lot of effort into making sure the suit was accurate, but he still managed to divide the face into half, put the eyes in the middle, as opposed to the top of the head, the way most kids do.

“I’m serious,” Parker says, and she _hmmph_ -s right back at him, mildly put out.

“So am I,” she says, and then taps the corner of the drawing, where Jonah is written in careful, black-ink letters, guided by his mother’s hand. “The signature was a nice touch.”

“Oh,” Parker seems embarrassed, like he’s forgotten that she was there to see that. “Well, I just thought—you know—he was pretty protective, so I figured it was important to him, you know?”

MJ thinks about the first pictures her parents ever hung up on their own fridge, about how long she had practiced to make sure she could sign Michelle in a looping scrawl that sort of vaguely resembled the signatures her parents dashed off so effortlessly.

“I know,” she says.

“Oh, right,” Parker says, like _that makes sense_ , and then remembers that it shouldn’t, not with the information she’s officially given him, and goes into Panicked Spider-Mode. “Uh, I mean, just—it makes sense.”

MJ thinks about pushing him for an explanation, but lets it slide.

She’s being nice today, it seems.

Because it really _was_ nice of him, to ask the kid to sign his project.

“I draw,” she says instead, and pretends she’s talking to a stranger, and not the dork who sits two seats down from her every day at lunch. “A lot.”

“Oh, yeah?” Parker says, like he doesn’t know, like she hasn’t caught him staring blankly while she draws Coach during detention. “You any good?”

Well, _she_ certainly likes to think so.

“Shut up,” MJ says. “I’m making a point.”

“Oh, sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all.

“And my mom and dad have always been super supportive,” she says, ignoring him. “But it’s cool. When an authority figure you’re not related to tells you that it’s good.”

He’s all quiet now, still and careful next to her, and she shrugs, forces herself to forge on ahead.

“So it’s pretty cool,” she says again. “What you did for that kid.”

When she looks back over, Parker looks quickly away, shuffles his feet on the sidewalk.

“I wasn’t trying,” he says in the general direction of the pavement. “To make it a thing.”

MJ wants to roll her eyes again, but she doesn’t.

It’s a near miss, though.

“Dude,” she says, and wonders briefly at how close she’s come—again—to almost saying _Peter_. ”C’mon. That’s what made it cool.”

He finally looks back over at her, and she scrambles for something else to say, comes up short, and settles for giving him a thumbs-up, instead.

It’s very lame.

But he huffs out another laugh, and seems determined to forge his way past the actual compliment, casting about for something else to talk about.

“So,” he decides, at last. “You’re an artist.”

MJ wrinkles her nose.

“I sketch,” she corrects, and that gets his attention.

“There’s a difference?”

“Sure,” she says. “Look at what they did to Thomas Kinkade.”

Parker thinks about it for a second. “The jigsaw puzzle cottage guy?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

He doesn’t say anything, just waits for her to continue, and MJ doesn’t really want to get into her whole issue with most self-proclaimed Artistes, but, hey, if he’s offering.

“There’s this idea,” she says, and thinks about a New York Times article she read the other day. “That populism is just as damaging to the artistic community as elitism. Maybe more so. That representing the world as you see it—in a way that the unwashed masses can recognize—that that’s bad, and that it’s only real art if you depict something different. Something that’s not the same as what everyone else can see.”

“Crops up in literary analysis, too,” Parker says, as comfortable with this topic as he is with physics or the Accords or anything she’s ever tried to talk to him about. “Any academic work in general.”

“Of course,” MJ agrees, because it’s not like this is an isolated issue.

Parker nods, thinking this through.

Then he nudges her, just a little, the way he did when they were still back on the street, with Jonah and his mother, and says, “So?”

MJ blinks, because there’s a whole lot more she can say on the topic, if that’s what he’s asking. “So what?”

“ _So_ ,” he says, and nods at her backpack, where he must have seen her stash her sketchbook, earlier. “What do you _sketch?_ ”

He puts extra emphasis on the word, because it was her word first, and MJ thinks about what she’s just said, about whether it’s real art, to show people the same things you see all around you, or whether that just makes it illustration.

“I sketch,” she says, and trails off mid-thought before forcing herself to continue. “I show people what I see.”

Something is different, something about the air, or the way Parker’s still standing, a respectful distance away but somehow still too close.

“And,” he prompts, when she doesn’t elaborate. “What do you see?”

What does she see?

The question makes her smile, just a little, and she wonders if he realizes what he’s asking, or if he’s just genuinely curious.

“A lot more than people realize,” she says.

“Oh, yeah?” His voice is smiling, and MJ knows, if she were to look under the mask, she would see him grinning, open and honest, waiting for her to make a joke. “Like what?”

And this is it.

This is the moment she almost tells him.

It would be so easy—she could pull out her sketchbook, show him the pictures she’s jotted down, of Spider-Man on one page and Peter Parker on the other, simple as that.

And no one who looked at her sketchbook would be able to guess, automatically, but she could do it, she could show him, and tell him _I know, I’ve known since the first time, when you walked me home because it was late, and there were all those people, and I was afraid—_

Her heart skips a beat, the way it did when they first shot up into the sky, and she thinks, _I could do it_. _I could really do it._

Except—

Parker’s still looking at her, and he’s smiling, she knows, but something about the moment is so suddenly unsure, so that she wants to take a step back, and forces herself to stay still.

She almost tells him.

She almost tells him, really, she does—

And then she doesn’t.

Because—

_Because—_

_Oh,_ she thinks, sudden and obvious. _Oh, so that’s why. Huh._

“Oh,” she says out loud, and forces herself to laugh, even though it’s suddenly not what she wants to be doing, not at all. “Oh, like lots of things.”

“Can I see?” Parker makes like he’s going to reach for her bag again, and MJ jumps back half a step at once, clamping her bag shut with both hands.

“No,” she says, and hopes he mistakes her jumpiness for an artistic temperament. “I don’t think you’d better.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” MJ says, and keeps a tight hold on her bag, in case he tries that thing that guys seem to think is cute, where they look through your stuff without asking and think it’s cute when you get mad.

She doesn’t think he will, because he’s not like that.

Instead, he backs off, raises both hands in surrender, and lets her weird little crisis slide without comment.

“Okay,” he says, and MJ lets out a breath, relieved.

“Okay,” she echoes.

If Parker can tell she’s currently having said weird little crisis, he doesn’t say anything, just takes a step back, too, and waves his hand to sort of vaguely indicate the entire city.

“Hey,” he says, still perfectly friendly and open. “So I guess I’d better get going.”

“Oh, right,” MJ says, and feels like an idiot all over again, because she always somehow manages to forget that this is Spider-Man, and that he’s got a whole city to look out for. “Sorry, I keep forgetting—”

“No, you’re good,” Parker says quickly. “Really, it’s fine. I don’t mind, I just—I need to do a quick check. At least.”

“Right,” MJ says. “Right, of course.”

“Good luck,” he says, and when she frowns, he waves a hand towards her bag, and she remembers the notecards all at once. “On your team thing.”

Her team thing.

MJ wants to laugh.

Instead, she kind of waves her backpack at him, notecards still safely secured in their side pocket. “Thanks.”

Parker eyes the nearest building, and she knows now what that feels like, the sudden catch when the webs latch onto the smallest crack in the stone.

Then he turns back to her, just to check, just one last time.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m perfect,” MJ says, which sounds a little over the top, as soon as she says it.

But Parker just says, “Of course you are”, and she knows, somehow, that he’s smiling once more.

“See you around,” she says, because it’s usually his line, and that makes him pause, too, so that if she had any doubts about whether he was grinning or not, they’re certainly gone now.

“Will you?”

“Yeah,” she says, and knows it’s the truth. “Probably.”

“Cool,” he says. “See you around, MJ.”

Then he shoots off into the sky, before she can even think about rolling her eyes over how he's not supposed to know to call her that, because that's something she told Peter Parker, not Spider-Man.

This time, she doesn’t wait until he’s disappeared, just marches up the stairs to her door, slips up to her room without more than a cursory _hey-I’m-home-going-upstairs-lots-of-homework_ in the general direction of her mom’s office.

She heads to her room, closes the door behind her, and stares at her phone for a long moment, considering.

_Alright,_ she thinks. _So you’ve got a crush on Peter Parker._

She opens a blank message to the number saved in her phone as _Dork #1_ , blinks at it for a second, and then closes it way too quickly.

_Hey_ , she texts Liz, before she can remind herself that this is a very bad idea, before she can convince herself that texting about AcaDec practice logistics isn’t nearly the same as something like this—

_so i think i’m going to make out with peter parker,_ she types, one unbelievably incriminating word at a time. _are you okay with that?_

Then she turns her phone face-down on the bed and stares at it in mounting horror for all of ten seconds, which is when it begins to buzz so quickly that, for one terrifying moment, she thinks Liz is calling her.

But when she picks it up, it’s only fifteen billion replies from Liz, arriving one after another in quick succession.

The first one says _!!!!_

It’s not really an answer.

But then the next one says, _MJ!!!!_ and the one after that says _are you kidding me, go for it???!?!?_ and MJ suddenly remembers how to breathe again.

She lays back on her bed, holding her phone at arm's length directly over her face to reply, ignoring the fact that this is a very bad idea, and is in fact how she nearly broke her nose the other day—

_Are you sure?_ she asks. _i don’t want to like overstep any bounds or anything_

_I live in Oregon??_ Liz responds almost immediately. _There are no bounds to overstep._

_go, be, do_

_live your dreams!!!_

_seize your moment!!!_

_wait, that’s from coco, don’t do that_

MJ watches the responses fly in and laughs out loud, bright and happy and feeling like a total cliché.

It’s not nearly as awful as she always thought it would be.

Finally, finally, Liz asks, _have you told him yet?????_

And there’s the million dollar question of the day.

_no,_ she says, after a moment’s pause. _wanted to check with you first_.

_oh well,_ Liz says. _but you’d bettwr tell him next time, okay?_

MJ reads the message, and then reads it again, and thinks about the way Parker had laughed, back out on the street below.

_See you around, MJ._

_of course,_ she texts back. _next time._

Then she switches off her phone screen, and lies there, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, from when she was six years old, and thinking about the way it had felt, to go flying between the city and the sky.

_Okay,_ she tells herself. _Okay, so next time._

Next time, for sure.

_Next time._

She can do this.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of MJ keeping tabs on the team's progress and Peter being Very Much Impressed by that comes from [CrimsonPetrichor's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimsonPetrichor/pseuds/CrimsonPetrichor) [i never planned on no one like you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11539371)
> 
> If you haven't read it, it's absolutely _amazing_ and also you should go read it right now, because, again, _amazing_


End file.
